This week, a world-famous scientific report suggested that a global campaign to plant trees could be the most effective way to mitigate the catastrophic effects of climate change. This is due to the role which trees play in storing carbon. The discussion around that news, however, brought to light the fact that the world is currently losing 10 billion trees a year. It takes time for trees to grow and longer still for them to reach their full carbon storing potential.

The debate on saving the world from the climate disaster rages on. Yet while we talk, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest has accelerated to the destruction of an area the size of one-and-a-half football pitches every minute; a rate which is a 60 per cent increase under Brazil’s new fascist President, Jair Bolsonaro.

The European Union has just signed a trade deal with a bloc of many South American countries, including Brazil. According to this trade agreement, this means that Brazil is obliged to meet the targets of the Paris Climate Accord, but as the rate of deforestation accelerates, I find it unlikely that any such trade agreement will keep Bolsonaro from chopping down the lungs of the planet for the sake of his country’s sickly and corrupt agriculture industry.

I am asking, therefore, why so few people are taking action. It baffles me that the world is not threatening to halt all trade with Brazil until the Amazon Rainforest is safe. On the ground, the standard response to the climate disaster seems to be a sense of individual resignation and helplessness. Alternatively, the response is scepticism, as some people assume they know better than fully-fledged scientists because they have watched a couple of YouTube videos.

Generally, the more one is confident of one’s expertise in a field, the more this can be correlated to ignorance, a true expert realises how much he still has to learn. I therefore ask that we leave science to peer-reviewed papers, not to quackery, self-help books and conspiracy theorists on YouTube. Climate sceptics almost always back up their denial with a link to a YouTube video, lacking the general knowledge to pick apart the biased arguments of a lone voice in the wilderness.

Once one accepts the reality of the crisis in which we find ourselves – without parallel in human history – then surrender is certainly not an option. Expecting somebody else to step in and save the planet at the last minute is not going to cut it. Every individual must take responsibility. Anything less than playing one’s part betrays man’s troubling laziness, or at least ignorance.

In my experience, even worldly and educated people do not realise the true threat inherent in the climate crisis, which includes the acidification of our oceans and the potential extinction of most life on Earth if we do nothing. Look it up.

Once one has agreed to take responsibility, then recycling and living a more sustainable life is only a small step in the right direction. We must influence others to apply pressure where it counts. We may do our bit as individuals, but without coordinated action to change the behaviour of governments, institutions and corporations, we will get nowhere. It is governments who set regulations and it is corporations that lobby against environmental policies. Companies must be brought into line with a carbon-cutting global economy and they will not do so out of the goodness of their hearts.

Therefore, one of the greatest things we can do is to put pressure on – and talk to – opinion leaders across the board. Anybody with a public platform, even if it is as a duck-lipped pouting Instagram model, owes it to his or her followers to direct them towards positive change.

Opinion leaders must convince the people and, in turn, the people must convince the opinion leaders. It is for that reason that I asked to meet the Archbishop this week, to present him with any information he may lack about the climate crisis so that the Church can use its global reach and resources to play a leading role in saving the planet.

It is every religion, every ideology and every walk of life, creed or race that must set aside all differences to work to save Earth. Nothing less will suffice. If you think the threat does not warrant your efforts, then it is because you do not yet know what is on the horizon. So it is my duty to motivate you to do your homework – and to get busy. We have between five and 12 years to make the drastic changes, which is hardly enough time to build or develop anything at all. The time to act was yesterday, but if you do your part, there is still hope. It is now up to you.

Timothy Alden is the Deputy Leader of Partit Demokratiku